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Psychology department provides window to the brain

Posted August 18, 2005; 01:28 p.m.

by Dana Crum

At both the undergraduate and graduate levels, Princeton's
Department of Psychology offers students an array of innovative courses
as well as ample opportunities for research.

To ensure undergraduate majors understand the main trends in
contemporary psychology, the department provides courses in a range of
subfields, including social and personality psychology, clinical
psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology and
neuroscience.

The Ph.D. program, which prepares students to teach and conduct
research in the field, requires them to specialize in one of four
areas: systems neuroscience; cognitive neuroscience; perception and
cognition; and personality and social psychology.

Just as graduate students have the option of specializing in
neuroscience, undergraduates can earn a certificate in neuroscience.
Students who pursue this opportunity have strong interests in molecular
biology and psychology and pursue an interdisciplinary study of brain
function in their junior and senior independent work.

An additional undergraduate program is under development. Funded by the
Henry Luce Foundation, the department's Brain, Machine and Mind
initiative is creating a program that will examine modern society's
attempt to construct individual and group identity in the face of
technologies that come ever closer to understanding and replicating the
mechanisms of human thought and feeling. The program's first course,
"Human Identity in the Age of Neuroscience and Information Technology,"
debuted in fall 2004. Like several of the department's ventures, the
program will take an interdisciplinary approach. For example, the first
course featured guest lecturers from 13 departments -- from classics to
computer science, psychology to physics.

An interdisciplinary approach also is at the core of the department's
Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior. The center's goal is
to understand the biological parts and processes behind phenomena such
as consciousness, moral behavior and logical thought. In addition to
combining psychology and neuroscience, the center draws on expertise
and advances in mathematics, physics, chemistry and molecular biology.
The center houses a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
scanner, a device that shows what portions of the brain are active
during actions and thought processes.

Another important resource in the department is the Psychology Library,
which contains more than 35,000 volumes, including monographs, bound
journals and standard and specialized reference materials. The library,
the department and the Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior
are located in Green Hall.